Donald Trump says being president isn't Ben Carson's 'thing'

Donald Trump and Ben Carson at the third Republican debate hosted by NBC.
(Image credit: ROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images)

Speaking on Good Morning America Tuesday to announce his new book, Donald Trump took a detour from self-promotion to critique fellow candidate Ben Carson's personality.

"I think that Ben just doesn't have the experience," said Trump, who also has never held elected office. "Look, you know, I"m going to make the greatest deals you've ever seen on trade, we're going to run the military properly, I'm going to take care of the vets. Ben can't do those things. Ben cannot deal on trade."

Trump went on to argue that being president is "not [Carson's] thing," because the ability to be president is something one is born with. Carson, Trump alleges, "hasn't got the temperament for it. It's not the right thing for him."

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Perhaps not coincidentally, an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll released Monday night found that Carson has surpassed Trump to take a six-point lead nationally among likely Republican voters.

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.